8.02.2007

What I find disturbing in mainstream society is that whenever there is someone racist in a sketch show, a TV show, or a movie, whether it be comedy, drama, or otherwise, more than likely (especially on television) that person is portrayed as a white trash red neck. Yet in today's society racism is inclusive to just "red necks." It's much greater than that. Racism is systemic and rooted within the very social and economical structures of American society that date back centuries.

When someone is portraying a racist as a redneck what that is trying to tell us is that racism is just confined to one small part of the country, the rural south. Yet in reality racism is everywhere. From the backwoods of Georgia to the liberal San Francisco Bay Area.

For once I would like to see a racist portrayed as someone who is, well, a typical racist. Like a upstanding business man who has a nice job, a spouse, kids, and has a neighbor who is Korean and a cousin's friend who is Black, etc. Racism isn't just confined to ignorant people who don't know any better. Racism is more than just "being ignorant" since racism doesn't stem from ignorance. It comes from something that is bigger than ignorance. If all it took was to be educated to not be racist than hell, this would be one nice society to live in. But that's not the case.

One can be liberal with a "Black friend" and still be racist since racism stems from centuries of building up white privilege by economic means, social means, and violent means.

1 comments:

I completely agree with you that it would be helpful to see racism portrayed in a mroe realistic way - i.e. that shows the structural and institiutional nature of racism.

but I think there's something missing here - I think there's some classism involved in the redneck stereotype as well. like racism is only for poor and uneducated people, you know? it jsut makes it easier once again for the typical white racist to distance him/herself from racism as it manifests in him/herself.

Double Consciousness is a term that comes from the pen of W. E. B. Du Bois which was made popular in his book The Souls of Black Folk. For Du Bois it meant “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” and of having two identities, one being American and the other being a person of color. “Two warring ideals in one dark body.” The title is also a pun on the fact that the two blog founders/editors are of different ethnicities which obviously effects the way they perceive the world. Jack Stephens is white (three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Guatemalan) and C is Pilipino. Despite this fact they are both unified in their thought on critiquing white privilege in American society and in combating its effects on people of color.